A new approach to TV advertising?

The other day I was working on a television OB (outside broadcast) when we noticed a team of guys erecting some portable advertising signs. It turns out that these guys have started a business selling "television advertising" which they deliver by placing signs in the background of live TV programs. Their slogan says "Television's longest advertisement", presumably because their sign stays visible for extended periods during the program. As the day unfolded and our broadcast location moved every half hour, these guys followed with their signs.

Now I don't want to give anyone a hard time for showing some entrepreneurial spirit but these guys have got it badly wrong. First of all, they hadn't properly researched the best places for their signs. It was hilarious watching them toil away putting up signs where our cameras were never going to point.

More importantly, they had made no contact with us to see if their plan was okay with us. Perhaps they knew what we would have said - that advertising on our channel costs money and we are not about to give it away for free, especially when they are blatantly targeting our own advertising clients.

So after hiring a team of workers and spending a bucket of money promoting this revolution in TV advertising, they found that all day long the camera shots were coincidentally framed so their signs were just out of shot. Not a single shot of their "advertisements" went to air.

The moral of this story? Don't prepare a whole business plan and start selling your product based on nothing but an assumption that it's going to work. And a business plan which relies on stealing clients from another business, then using that same business to deliver the goods, is not a good plan.

It seems so shocking that an advertiser would stoop so low to get a freebie in, when they're really not in control - it's such a novice approach. They're apparently going along the right track but they're playing in the wrong field! I wish I could have seen their faces when they realized their work was for naught.